Taxi Driver Dad from the Philippines Seeks Your Help

Hello, my name is Julius.

I am not very good at English and computers, so I asked my daughter for help to write this for me.

First off, I want to thank you for coming to this page to read my story. That itself means a lot to me. The last thing I wanted to do was to ask for help from others concerning my family's overwhelming financial debt. However, we are at a position that we've tried all our best but still reached the dead end. I'm at a point where I have no other choice. My family is in need of assistance to get through these depressing times. As a father of three children, I am deeply heartbroken to see my family suffer like this. We are faced with a large debt that is way over our income. We have been trying to pay off our debts for 10 years, surviving from paycheck to paycheck, but to no avail, it has only gotten worse.

Ten years ago, my wife and I started our first lending business. It got bankrupt in just a year. Our clients didn't pay off their loans and ran away with our money. This was the beginning of our horrible battle with debts. We couldn't save up money because there's always something we need to pay off. A year later, my mother-in-law helped us to open up a new business to hopefully help us survive. However, this business only made our debts worse. We had to loan a lot to keep it going and to provide for my family's needs. Last year (2019), we sold this business off because it was too much for us to bear. It wasn't profitable anymore and it only made us slaves to our debts. The payment we got from selling the said business was all placed to a promising investment that we thought was an answered prayer to our family's overwhelming debts. However, we later found out that we got scammed. This brought the whole family, even our kids, into depression. We literally had nothing left. We could hardly fall asleep at night thinking about how we can pay off all of our debts and bills. We had to face legal actions. If we don't pay off our debts, my wife and I could get imprisoned. We grieve for our kids when that happens.

Because I can't apply for a stable job due to my lack of education background, I decided to rent and drive a taxi. As a taxi driver, I get to earn 12,000 Philippine Peso ($240USD) per month just enough to pay for food, electricity, and water. Ever since COVID-19 happened, I hardly earn 9,000 pesos ($180USD) per month, and that's me driving from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Recently, we were asked to leave the house we rented because we haven't paid the rent for almost 4 months now. This pandemic only made our situation worse. We have a mounting debt of 668,000 pesos ($13,400USD) and we have no idea how we can pay it off with the very little income we get from my driving and from my son's internship.

I am asking for your kind generosity to help us. Please, help us. You can give whatever you can to help us get through this. Please spread the word and let your kind friends know. A little help is a great miracle for us.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. May God bless you.

Sincerely,
Julius